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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23885290">A Tale of Love</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookworm2017/pseuds/bookworm2017'>bookworm2017</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sanders Sides (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Crying, Divorce, Fighting, Grief/Mourning, Kissing, M/M, Minor Character Death, Swearing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 15:26:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,420</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23885290</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookworm2017/pseuds/bookworm2017</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Roman, Patton, Logan, and Virgil were born soulmates. Any markings that appear on their skin appears on the others. They grew up together through this bond, helping each other through everything from life changing events to sleepless nights. Fate will inevitably bring them together, but you knew that. the interesting part is leading up to that. This is their story, one full of love.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>LAMP - Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Tale of Love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this story has been one I’ve been working on for months and has not left me alone. So here’s a new soulmate AU where whatever appears on your soulmates skin also appears on yours. </p><p>I tried something a little different with this one. having a storyteller that pops up here and there. Let me know what you think. Love it, hate it, indifferent. I’d appreciate the feedback!</p><p>this story is also posted to my tumbler @sanders-specs</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Honore de Balzac</em>
</p><p>Souls are something special. They connect us to the earth, to each other. At our core, souls are what makes us, us.</p><p>So when someone is born with a soulmate, it’s a blessing. It means that there’s someone out there with a complimentary soul, someone who shares a very special connection.</p><p>No one is quite sure why, but this connection, be it science or magic, allows the soulmates to feel what the other feels. Well, on their skin, anyway. A mark on one arm appears on the others. It’s a strange and wonderful feeling. So I’ve been told, at least. No matter the distance between the soulmates, the marks always show up. When man first went into space, it was said that the astronauts were able to speak with their soulmates just fine, just as if they were still on earth.</p><p>It’s a wondrous thing, truly. The one thing scientist were never quite able to figure out.</p><p>But, you didn’t come here to listen to me ramble. No, you came here to hear the story of four particular soulmates. A rare thing indeed. See, a soul matching with one is something amazing. A soul matching with three others, well, it’s an anomaly.</p><p>Please don’t misunderstand, love is something that can be shared between however many people that it can reach. No matter the type, love is strong, stronger even than the soulmate bond.</p><p>Four people having that bond is something not many people have heard of. But this is the story of such a bond, one that is rare, even amongst it’s rarity. Never have I seen people who love each other so fully so early in their lives, and who grow up together like these four.</p><p>Theirs is a story that needs to be told. Perhaps I am biased, but I think that it is the love stories of all love stories. But I’ll let you be the judge of that.</p>
<p></p><div class="media-holder media-holder-draggable media-holder-hr"><hr class="tmblr-truncated"/>
<p></p></div><p>From the beginning, Roman proved to have a vibrant imagination. The moment he learned that a crayon made pretty marks on paper, he fell in love with it. The colors, the feel of drawing and coloring, the happiness of making something out of nothing.</p><p>It was the same for music. The first time he saw an instrument—a toddler piano that had been a birthday present from a family friend—he was intrigued. He had squealed in delight when he’d pressed a key and a strange but beautiful noise came from it. He’d spent hours playing with it, loving every single note he could make.</p><p>But the thing that made Roman the happiest, the most joyful, were not the drawings he made or the music he heard, but the marks on his skin that appeared on his skin all the time. He loved waking up to see a new squiggle on his arm or taking a bath and watching in awe as the paint marks on his hands stayed exactly where they were, as if the water was no match for them.</p><p>“That means you have a soulmate,” his mother explained as she scrubbed shampoo into his hair. He was staring down at his hands, at the watercolor paint stains. “When they get marks on them, it shows up on your skin too, but only they can wash it off.”</p><p>“So, when I draw on myself, they can see it?” Roman asked, to which his mother smiled.</p><p>“Yes, my little prince,” she said, tilting his head back so she could pour clean water on his hair. “they can see it too.”</p><p>Roman let that information sink in as he looked back down at his hands, then at his ankles, where there were brown spots from what he assumed was dirt. “Mommy?”</p><p>“Hmm?” she hummed.</p><p>“Can you have more than one soulmate?” he asked.</p><p>Her hands stilled where they were pouring soap onto a sponge. She propped her arms on the side of the rub with a thoughtful look on her face. “I suppose you could,” she said. “I’d never thought about it before.”</p><p>Roman nodded and watched the brown spots fade away.</p><p> </p><p>As Roman grew older, he threw himself into his crafts. He spent hours upon hours playing piano, practicing at home and taking lessons from a nice older lady that lived down the street from him. When he wasn’t playing piano, he was drawing or painting or building.</p><p>There was hardly a moment when Roman’s hands weren’t covered in something. Paint or charcoal or pencil. Most of the time he wouldn’t even notice, if it weren’t for the scratching sensation on his wrist, someone gently reminding him to wash his hands.</p><p>Ah, his soulmates. Yes, he had more than one, as he had suspected all those years ago. It seemed from the moment they learned to read and write, they were writing to each other. Before then, Roman at least had drawn them pictures everyday. It had started as a small idea, when one of his soulmates had drawn a frowny face in a dark purple on their thigh that Roman had only noticed while he was getting dressed.</p><p>His father, who had been helping him, also frowned. “It looks like someone is upset,” he had said.</p><p>Roman had bit his lip. “What do I do?” he asked worriedly. The idea of one of his soulmates being upset was, well, upsetting.</p><p>His father had simply grabbed a bright red marker from Roman’s desk and handed it to him. “Draw something to help them feel better.”</p><p>So Roman had. He’d drawn a flower from the frowny face, and he’d had his father show him how to draw a heart so he could put one next to it. It was quickly followed by a bright blue and a dark blue one.</p><p>Roman had looked up at his father with a smile. “I have three!” He’d exclaimed, to which his father only chuckled.</p><p>“It sure does look like that. Now let’s get you ready for school before mommy has to come up here and get us.”</p><p>From that day forward, Roman drew a picture from his soulmates on his thigh or his stomach—a place where only they could see it. He always signed it with a red heart.</p><p>He’s learned about soulmates in school. How no one really knew how it started, but that many people could been seen with drawings or writings on their skin. How a soulmate bond was one that was incomparable to any other bond in existence. His teachers had been clear that it didn’t have to be romantic, but that a soulmate was only someone who was destined to be in your life, to be a guide, a partner, a friend, a companion. Someone who served as a reminder that they were never alone.</p><p>But oh, did Roman dream of romance. He was swept up in Disney movies and fairytales and he dreamed of being someone’s dream prince. Many times, he would find himself doodling a crown on his hand. It would be small, because it was for him, not his soulmates, and they seemed to sense that, because they never acknowledged it.</p><p>The day Roman learned the letter R, he had immediately grabbed for the pen he kept on him at all times and he carefully copied it from the way it looked on the big picture his kindergarten teacher was showing them. He wrote it big on his arm, and then it was like he couldn’t stop. He wrote it on his hand, his wrists, his ankles. Any place he could easily reach in the middle of the classroom.</p><p>“Roman,” his teacher had scolded when she noticed. She walked over and examined the letter for a moment before she sighed. “Very good,” she said, “but keep practicing on your paper okay?”</p><p>That night during bath time, his mother had raised her eyebrows at the marks. “So, you learned a new letter today?” she asked as she got to work scrubbing at the marks.</p><p>Roman nodded. “I dunno why I needed to write it,” he said.</p><p>His mother only smiled. “Because your name to starts with an R, baby. Your mind wanted your soulmates to know that.”</p><p>Roman had gaped and watched as his mother gently scrubbed away at the writings. There were some copies of the letter next to his, all in the colors he’d grown used to—light blue, dark blue, and purple. They had been the first colors he’d learned, and ones he was sure he would never forget.</p><p>“The more you learn to read and write,” his mother said as the red slowly faded from his skin, “the more you’ll be able to talk to them.”</p><p>So, from then on Roman did his best to learn his letters and words. He was one of the firsts in his class to be able to write a full sentence. And then a paragraph, and then an entire story, which birthed his new love.</p><p>Journals joined his sketchbooks and music sheets. His hand would get cramped with all of the writing he did, but his hands were quickly getting used to moving so much.</p><p>It didn’t take long after Roman learned the letter R that he learned his next three letters—P, L, and V. Just like when Roman had learned R, the letters appeared almost all over his skin. It was to a point that Roman’s teacher had used the multiple attempts at writing the letter on his skin to show the class examples of the letters.</p><p>P was the light blue. They liked to draw flowers and suns and rainbows. Sometimes they would draw hearts and animals too, or sometimes they were just doodles.</p><p>L was dark blue. They wouldn’t draw so much as doodle. They would respond to other drawings, but mostly they would practice their letters or, as they got older, write reminders or homework assignments on their wrists.</p><p>V was purple. They wouldn’t draw as often as P or even L, but when they did it was always with precision and carness, like they were very well aware that what they were drawing was showing up not just on their skin. Sometimes they would just doodle, and those were Roman’s favorites, because they were always show just a little bit of who V was.</p><p>When they could well and truly write, they started writing to each other every day.</p><p>Roman remembered the first time he wrote to them instead of drew. He sat on his bed with his pen in his hand, staring at the paper where he had practiced what he was going to say before he was ready to put it on his skin. He was nervous, but also excited as he put the tip of the pen to his skin.  </p><p><em>Hi</em>, he wrote carefully, <em>I’m R</em>.</p><p>He’d frowned as he tried to write the rest of his name, but it was like the pen had run out of ink, even though it was brand new.</p><p>His attention was brought back to his arm as he felt the ever-familiar light scratching.</p><p><em>Hi!</em> P wrote followed by a smiley face.</p><p>Roman’s disappointment at not getting to write his full name—he’d practiced so hard to make it look nice!—quickly disappeared and was filled with excitement. One of them had written back!</p><p><em>Hello R and P</em>, L wrote, just as carefully as Roman had written his greeting.</p><p>Roman quickly drew a happy and excited face because he wasn’t entirely sure how to write down just how excited he was. He waited for V to add on, but they didn’t. Even after a few minutes, they still hadn’t added anything. Roman got the sense that the other two were waiting as well, but there was nothing.</p><p>When Roman had ran down to his mother, worried, she had only sat him down at the kitchen table with a glass of chocolate milk to soothe him.</p><p>“Roman, honey, your soulmate might still be trying to figure out how to write,” she explained. “It takes some kids longer to get it down, and they may be shy to put anything down, especially if you’re ahead of them.”</p><p>“Oh,” Roman had said, looking down at his arm. L and P hadn’t said anything else, and Roman could almost sense their disappointment. After a moment, he stuck his arm to his mother. “Can you write something for me?”</p><p>His mother smiled and nodded, taking his pen from him and pushing Roman’s sleeve up further so she had more room.</p><p><em>Hello this is R’s mother,</em> she began, <em>he would like V to know to take your time learning to read and write and it’s okay, he likes drawing better anyway</em>.</p><p>Roman watched his arm carefully, but when a reply came, it was on his other arm.</p><p><em>This is V’s father. He says thank you. You should also know that he is only four, so it will take another year or two before he can fully read and write</em>.</p><p>Roman looked up at his mother. “He’s younger than me?” he asked.</p><p>His mother nodded. “That makes more sense to me,” she said with a laugh. She pinned Roman’s arm down to write a reply.</p><p>
  <em>That’s okay, I’ll help you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I will too.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Me too!</em>
</p><p>The different colored blues popped up under Roman’s red, both in a different hand writing than before, so Roman only guessed that they had copied Roman’s and V’s method of having their parents write for them.</p><p>Roman’s mother smiled and grabbed for the wet wipes that were always close by, scrubbing away the first sentence she’d written.</p><p>
  <em>Take care of each other, and be patient with each other. When you meet, you’ll be inseparable. I can feel it -Ginger</em>
</p><p>She set the pen down, having read aloud what she was saying. Roman smiled and hugged his mother tightly, even as smiley faces and hearts joined her message.</p><p>Roman had kept it on him as long as possible, savoring his mother’s words. He’d even had his father take a picture of it, just so he could have it for later. His soulmates seemed to respect it too, because they left it alone when drawing to each other for the rest of the day. It only came off that night when his mother scrubbed it off in the bathtub.</p>
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